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Afghanistan: Taliban to reap $1T mineral wealth
- ricardobeat 5y agoIf these riches are accessible, why haven't the US helped the national government exploit it during the last 20 years of occupation, or themselves? Seems like a bit of a sensationalized headline.
- kesselvon 5y agoThey weren't accessible because of the ongoing Taliban insurgency, which is now the sole existing government.
- ianleeclark 5y agohttps://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/how-afghanistans-president-helped-his-brother-secure-lucrative-mining-deals-with-a-us-contractor https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/how-afghanistans-pre... We did.
- olsonjeffery 5y agoThis is the actual story. The US has been de facto doing business with anyone, especially the Taliban, to get raw resources (in very dangerous and environmentally damaging ways) for use in some markets for many years. I'm curious what happened to those arrangements and facilities. I think most of the people profiled in the OCCRP are stateside now (Emily Scott King is in beautiful Miami).
- samizdis 5y agoThanks for posting that, I'd been blissfully unaware of that murkiness. On a side note, "artisanally mined" looks like a euphemism for "dug out of the dirt with spades and bare hands by the desperately poor serving brutal overlords", or something similar. Pretty much like the "artisan" child cobalt miners of Congo. See [1] Is my phone powered by child labour? [1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2016/06/drc-cobalt-child-labour/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2016/06/drc-coba...
- traceroute66 5y agoWasn't the old joke that the US only invaded countries where there was oil ? (i.e. in answer to your question, the US would have "helped" if it was oil that was in the ground)
- somethoughts 5y agoI think Key & Peele covered the topic well in this one! But We Have Oil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3jcmFNxRzQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3jcmFNxRzQ
- MikeDelta 5y agoKey & Peele are great at bringing serious topics to the attention, but also just poking fun at typical characters we encounter in daily life.
- hncurious 5y agoOil is largely a red herring, in this case anyway. Julian Assange in 2011: "The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war" https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1427929346262642688 https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1427929346262642688 US veteran that oversaw training of Afghan forces, 2021: "I would sit in on staff meetings, because part of my position there was with a Joint Command that was building the Afghan military and police force — the division that I worked with was about training and policy for the Afghan police. And that also included arming and funding them. I don’t think I could overstate that this was a system just basically designed for funneling money and wasting or losing equipment." https://mtracey.substack.com/p/a-big-money-funneling-operation-afghanistan https://mtracey.substack.com/p/a-big-money-funneling-operati... And now said equipment is confirmed lost or in the hands of the Taliban: "A U.S. defense official on Monday confirmed the Taliban’s sudden accumulation of U.S.-supplied Afghan equipment is enormous." https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-army-taliban-185017ba2944eb43392a0ad8ffffb25f https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-army-taliban-185017ba29...
- yorwba 5y agoAfghanistan's largest export in 2019 was gold with a total value of $968 million (43.2% of all exports), up from $7.35 million in 2014. https://oec.world/en/profile/country/afg https://oec.world/en/profile/country/afg
- pjc50 5y agoInteresting. It's up spectacularly even from 2018. It looks like the Taliban have had control over this: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/22/taliban-afghanistan-mining-peace-talks/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/22/taliban-afghanistan-min...
- anonAndOn 5y agoWhere is opium on that list? Isn't Afghanistan the world's #1 exporter of opium?
- pjc50 5y agoThey're not very accessible, they're in Afghanistan. They face the same problem the US occupation did in reverse: the country is inherently inaccessible. There are a few scattered bits of railway. There are a few long mountainous roads out. It is landlocked. It is uneconomic to ship raw minerals other than by rail or sea, since they have low value density. Step 1 would be "build a thousand miles of railway", especially if they're thinking of shipping to China. (This is why the a mainexport was opium: very high value density makes it worth shipping over the passes. Same goes for gold mentioned in a sibling comment)
- avmich 5y agoWould it be better if Taliban would convert to a similar to petrocracy state?
- specialist 5y agoI wonder if the Prophet supports a sovereign wealth fund.
- avmich 5y agoI'm sure that, similarly to Bible, which can be used for any point of view, Quran can be interpreted carefully to support exactly this.
- bostonsre 5y agoHopefully they keep their word about being more moderate than their previous time in power and if so, maybe the people of afghanistan could attain some well deserved peace and prosperity. I have my doubts that leaders of a battle hardened organization like theirs can be moderate instead of hardline/ultra conservative, but I truly hope they are.
- tw04 5y agoGiven that they have already stated they'll protect women's rights "within the limits of Islam" - I wouldn't hold your breath. The "limits of Islam" was the excuse for the abhorrent treatment of women the first time they were in power.
- DoreenMichele 5y agoPlease don't blame Islam for this. There are oppressive fundamentalist Christian organizations that also want to actively keep women barefoot and pregnant. The struggle for equality continues even in developed/Western countries where even relatively well-paid and famous women tend to make less than their male counterparts and have added their testimony to the #MeToo movement.
- j_walter 5y agoThose organizations don't have the widespread adoption that the extreme Islamists do...which is the Taliban and they now control a country of 38M people. What you are talking about is small cults in isolated pockets of society.
- DoreenMichele 5y agoI appear to be the highest ranked woman on HN and the only openly female member to have ever made the leaderboard -- twice under different handles. I was homeless for nearly six years and actively participated here for about 4.5 years of that. I remain dirt poor. I am currently flat broke (by which I mean I don't expect to eat today). No matter how neutrally, respectfully and unaccusingly I do it, whenever I talk about how my gender has interfered with my ability to establish an adequate income via HN where plenty of men manage to make scads of money, I get nothing but flak. I don't have a lot of patience for people on HN being on their high horse about women's rights issues. This forum can't clean up its own messes, but boy can people here point fingers. Color me unimpressed. And also uninterested in arguing it further because it never does me any good. It just aggravates the men who don't want to hear that sexism and misogyny are alive and well and most of them are actively part of the problem but want to think they are not. Aggravating the men who like to see themselves as "good guys" inevitably means I get treated worse, not better.
- Proven 5y agoThey wont' reap shit, it's not like all those minerals are sitting out there at the Kabul International waiting for the CCP to haul them to China. But also, so what??? Are we supposed to envy those poor bastards?
- makotech222 5y agoDamn, how terrible it is that the afghani government, made of entirely afghani people, are going to exploit the wealth of the land they have historically lived on, instead of white saviors.
- josephcsible 5y agoThe Afghan government isn't exploiting anything. They're in exile.
- makotech222 5y agoYou mean the puppet government the US imperialist imposed on them? Yeah, exile, sure.
- jnwatson 5y agoThe author might as well be talking about the asteroid 16 Psyche. They need the supply chain, transportation, electrical, and financial systems necessary to exploit those resources, none of which Afghanistan has.
- whatshisface 5y agoRemember that part about China moving quickly to recognize them?
- anonAndOn 5y agoThe Taliban joins the Belt and Road Initiative[0] in 3, 2, 1... [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative
- EarthIsHome 5y agoBetter than getting bombed if you ask me.
- anonAndOn 5y agoThat won't happen again if Chinese interests are now at stake.
- ssijak 5y agoImagine going to a country by building infrastructure and not with bombs to destroy it..hmm I wonder what would the populace prefer.
- TremendousJudge 5y agoThat's what both the soviets and the americans where doing in the 70s there... didn't work back then either
- 1-6 5y agoAccessing resources requires a mature system of governance similar to Maslow's triangle. I don't think Afghanistan is at the step (yet) where it can import scientists, hire heavy duty machine operators, logistics, and labs to exploit that mineral wealth. The Chinese, however, are ready to take on that challenge. They're in a different position. If the US decided to start mining in Afghanistan, it would only be seen as an exploiter (start a war, take from the people). The Chinese are viewed as a helper (help pick up from the ravages of war and build infrastructure). It's unfortunate but that's reality.
- RegnisGnaw 5y agoOf course they can, its not that hard. Why do you think China is playing nice with the Taliban. A Chinese State Owned Company will come in with Chinese workers to run the mines for the Taliban. The top officials in the Taliban will receive annual royalty payments.
- sorenn111 5y agoThis entirely. China is happy to go from nothing and not even functioning government to fully operational resource extraction. It is occurring in a variety of countries in the "belt and road" initiative. I'm sure they are plenty happy to grease the right wheels and make the appropriate official/unofficial payments where needed.
- 1-6 5y agoDidn't edit my reply soon enough :). I agree, the Chinese are doing exactly that.
- 1-6 5y agoPresident Biden didn't consult with other world leaders before acting on Afghanistan. This was an actual statement during a press briefing. A quick talk around the table would reveal what China's intentions would be (such as what we're doing here). This amounts to nothing but giving away Afghanistan to China by the Biden Administration. It would have been more appropriate to assist our allies to working with the Afghan government while the US still has some occupation.
- theptip 5y agoThis is great news. The only chance Afghanistan has to actually become a stable democracy is to have a functioning economy with a better option than opium. Of course, this is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Hopefully they are able to capture the value of these resources instead of seeing that value exported to a more developed country. I fear that with the present level of corruption, it’s more likely that some officials will get rich, and most of this value will be taken by someone else.
- josephcsible 5y agoThere is nothing great about a terrorist group being in control of a trillion dollars' worth of anything.
- trasz 5y agoIndeed, but there’s also the Afghan people there, and their conditions won’t improve without working economy.
- elzbardico 5y agoLet’s not forget that your terrorist group was once called freedom fighters by the US government.
- TheGigaChad 5y agoLie.
- opo 5y agoThe Taliban were not part of the groups that fought against the Soviet occupation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban
- krustyburger 5y agoTry clicking on the articles about any of the current or former leaders and see what they were up to in the 1980s. Just because the organization called the Taliban was officially formed later does not mean that it’s not the same folks who fought the Soviets.
- nitwit005 5y agoOr they'll just grow a bunch of opium, which earns them billions despite lacking infrastructure.
- j_walter 5y agoThat infrastructure they have...and the $/weight is much easier to manage.
- whoknowswhat11 5y agoOne thing folks in the US constantly seem to forget when denouncing other systems is folks in these countries are measuring against alternatives. What was the quality of the alternative the US provided? Did it inspire loyalty? Were the police we paid for helpful, or did they take our weapons and extort folks on the side of the road? Did police commanders take our money and pay their men or loot it? Was justice fair, or did the dollar win? Are there any places in Afghanistan where huge displays of wealth spring up set against grinding poverty (this is not uncommon when a western power allows elites to loot). Did Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo help us communicate our values effectively to the locals? Now we are going to cut them off and try and starve them. Biden and team think that will work better - we'll see.
- trhway 5y agopractically match made in heavens - Taliban was helping China in hunting down Uighurs hiding in in Afghanistan and that from 1 year ago: https://www.rferl.org/a/exclusive-taliban-s-expanding-financial-power-could-make-it-impervious-to-pressure-secret-nato-report-warns/30842570.html https://www.rferl.org/a/exclusive-taliban-s-expanding-financ... "The key to rising revenues has been profits from mining, growing from $35 million in 2016 to $464 million in 2020, according to one of the Taliban members interviewed, who added that China and the United Arab Emirates were the biggest buyers of the raw materials."